IMPEACHMENT: THE OVERVIEW

IMPEACHMENT: THE OVERVIEW; WITH PARTISAN RANCOR, A BITTER HOUSE DEBATES THE PRESIDENT'S IMPEACHMENT

Published: December 19, 1998

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Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois, son of the civil rights leader, said impeachment constituted an attack not only on Mr. Clinton but also on the accomplishments of the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society. African-Americans, who benefited hugely from all of those programs, have been among the President's staunchest backers from the start.

''In 1868,'' Mr. Jackson said, referring to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, ''it was about Reconstruction. In 1998, it's still about Reconstruction.''

There were repeated references to the Johnson impeachment, which was voted upon in the same House chamber where today's debate took place, and to the Watergate case in 1974. Articles of impeachment never reached the full House on that occasion, because Richard M. Nixon concluded that his conviction in the Senate was certain and resigned the Presidency to avoid it.

''Some of my colleagues,'' said Representative Vic Fazio of California, a Democrat who is retiring, ''obsess about Slick Willie in the same way that those on my side of aisle used to [obsess] about Tricky Dick.''

Representative Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, brought up the House Judiciary Committee's decision in 1974 that suspicions about Richard Nixon's 1969 tax returns did not justify impeachment.

Mr. Sherman noted that a Republican Congressman who would one day be the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, had agreed in that instance that impeachment of a President was not warranted except for misconduct dangerous to the constitutional system.

But the continuing air assault on Iraq, which is code-named ''Desert Fox,'' came up more often today than transgressions and crises from the past.

Some suggested that the Democrats saw a political opening in the Republicans' decision to stage the debate while the bombs were still falling. But some seemed genuinely offended; their views were crystallized on Thursday night by Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of Manhattan, who served in the Korean War.

''You can't separate the President from the Commander in Chief,'' said Mr. Rangel. ''You can't salute him in the morning and impeach him in the afternoon.''

For the Republicans, Representative Sam Johnson of Texas, who spent seven years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, made this retort: ''Our military fighting men want the Congress to carry on our responsibilities every day.''

A potentially volatile ingredient was injected into the political equation by the Thursday evening confession of marital infidelity by Representative Robert L. Livingston of Louisiana, the Speaker-designate. But there were only a few veiled allusions to his difficulties during the debate, all from the Democrats.

Officially, the item under debate today was House Resolution 611.

As read out this morning in a somber voice by the House reading clerk, Paul Hays, it began ''Resolved, that William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors,'' and went on to accuse Mr. Clinton of perjury before a grand jury and in the Paula Jones lawsuit, of obstructing justice in a variety of ways, and of abusing his power by lying to and misleading Congress in his answers to 81 questions posed by the House Judiciary Committee.

Photos: Henry J. Hyde, opening the debate, sounded the Republican theme of the rule of law (C-Span); the President spent the day on Iraq and other matters. (Associated Press)(pg. A1); The impeachment debate was discussed early and late yesterday. On the subway to the Capitol were Alcee L. Hastings, left, Democrat of Florida, and Abbe D. Lowell, the Judiciary Committee's Democratic counsel. At the Rayburn House Office Building's entrance to the subway, Representative Jay Dickey, Republican of Arkansas, left, talked with J. C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma, chairman of the Republican Conference. With the debate under way, Representative William L. Clay, Democrat of Missouri, met in the Capitol with Representative Louis Stokes, Democrat of Ohio, a former chairman of the House ethics committee. (Photographs by PAUL HOSEFROS/The New York Times)(pg. B3)